The constant progress of the Information Handling System (I.H.S.) technology and that of the communication systems, particularly with the explosion of the Internet and intranet networks, have resulted in the development of an era of information and services. With a single personal device, a user can get a connection to the Internet network, and have direct access to a wide range of information and services, including electronic business applications.
Solutions were developed in the art for rendering easier the access to these huge amounts of resources and for improving the possibilities of negotiation and new services. For this purpose, agents were developed for allowing the customers to delegate some specific tasks to automatic modules in order to simplify part of the searching process.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,877,759 assigned to Netscape Communications Corp. and entitled Interface for user/agent interaction shows a first example of a user interface which provides assistance to the client user and an interface that is centered on autonomous processing of whole tasks rather than sequences of commands.
International application number WO 98/47250 assigned to IBM Corp. and entitled Apparatus and method for communicating between an intelligent agent and client computer process using disguised messages illustrates an agent for the communication with a client and which uses a selector known by both parties to generate and interpret messages and thereby to effectively disguise confidential information transmitted in the message from third parties.
International application number WO 98/43146 assigned to IBM Corp., and entitled Intelligent agent with negotiation capability and method of negotiation therewith Is another example of an improvement brought to a so called intelligent agent.
In addition to the development of agents, the use of one or more profile files located within the user's machine, is clearly a very promising field of development. A profile file is usually more easily updated since the customer feels more concerned about the information that he loads into his own profile file(s). Further this Information continuously remains under his/her own control. When the customer permits it, the use of the information loaded into that or those profiles shows to be a material of the highest interest for service providers since it clearly enhances the personalization and the possibilities of negotiation with the customer. Practically, the profile files can be used by product/service providers who wish to propose an offer well tailored to the customer's needs.
Unpublished European patent application n° 0041004.6 entitled “process and apparatus for allowing transaction between an user and a remote server” by G. Brebner, filed on 21 Jan. 2000 and assigned to the Assignee of the present application, shows a profile file which is used for improving the possibilities of negotiation between a customer and a product or accessories provider. Basically, there is disclosed a process which receives an abstract request expressed by the user. The request is subject to contextual analysis for the purpose of preparing n aggregate request based on the abstract formulation of the client, which can then be completed with additional technical information which is extracted from a local profile. Since the products/service providers are automatically given direct access to the internal configuration of the machine, of which the user may even not be aware, they can propose offers which are correctly tailored to the users, even when those are not versed in the field of computers.
While the use of one or more profiles substantially enhances the personalization of the access to the web, as well as the possibilities of negotiation between the customer and the service/product providers, it can be seen that the customers feel more and more concerned with the question of the privacy of their private data, and the risk of any misuse of that information.
Mechanisms have been developed for minimizing the exposure of sensitive data on the Internet and particularly the highly confidential information that is contained within such profile files. Unpublished European patent application n° 00410005.3 (HP50001003) entitled “method for a personalized access to the Internet network” by G. Brebner et al, filed on 21 Jan. 2000 and also assigned to the Assignee of the present application brings a first solution to the problem of privacy. There is disclosed a process, still based on an agent, which avoids the dissemination of the user's personal data over the web. For that purpose, an agent located on the user's machine generates a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). page for the user and which takes into account private data contained into at least one profile file. At different predetermined intervals, the Agent module polls one or more predetermined service provider(s), and downloads a file that simultaneously contains both data representative of products or services, and rules for stating the conditions for the attribution of the data. By comparing the rules with the private data contained within said at least one profile, a local data mining process is achieved and the Agent can construct a personalized HTML page which contains an offer well tailored to the customer's needs. This can be finally displayed into the web browser of the client machine Since the HTML page is locally generated with the private data that is contained In the profile(s), and which belongs to the user, the service provider does not need to create and maintain any kind of centralized database, and the user profile remains in the user's machine.
The present invention extends the possibilities of exploitation of the profile files, which substantially increases the security of the access to the important information therein contained.